team cascadia vs. the Repugs in NYC - 2 of 3

This second of a three part photo essay covers both poor people's marches on Monday, the opening day of the Republican Convention and police tactics for the arrests on the Tuesday day of action.

For more info come to Saturday September 18th's Report Back at 7pm at the IWW hall at 617 E. Burnside.

06. Cheri Honkala calls on the UN to investigate the US

07. End Homelessness - Vote!

08. Vote community and topple Bush

09. Unpermitted march on the RNC

10. stand-off one block from the convention

11. This day we marched across Manhattan twice

12. resting at St. Marks

13. Amelia & Chris go to jail

14. Is this what a free country looks like?

06. Cheri Honkala calls on the UN to investigate the US

For me the best marches were the two poor people's rallies and marches, one permitted and one unpermitted, that took place on the opening day of the convention. These were Portland-sized marches but with the strong support of people of color, the working poor and the homeless. The 9 images on the next 3 screens are from these 2 marches. While poor families who have been living with her in tent cities called "Bushvilles," look on, the unpermitted rally the organizer, Cheri Honkala, announces:

"We're standing in front of the United Nations ... and we are calling on the Organization of American States to investigate human rights violations taking place in the United States of America. And if the U.S. doesn't want to do it, the rest of the world can."

The buttons the family is wearing in the top photo of the permitted Still We Rise.org rally read, "End Homelessness -- VOTE!" Families make up 40% of America's homeless population.

The lower images show Cheri Honkala and another speaker at the unpermitted rally. At least a dozen individuals spoke passionately and succinctly from personal experience of being homeless, or living in poverty, or working to end these afflictions.

"It's a shame that the richest country in the world allows 12 million children to go to bed hungry every night... It's a shame that the richest country in the world throws women off welfare without a job, without job training, promoting marriage and failed policies"

Our team heard the police officers in charge speaking on the phone to someone about whether or not to arrest the leaders of this unpermitted march as they first stepped into the street. We don't for sure know why the police backed off. However, it seems likely that someone in charge of the police concluded that arresting poor families would not have fit with the storyline that it was just the young "anarchists" that were causing trouble.

On Monday August 30th Team Cascadia marched across Manhattan to the RNC convention in Madison Square Gardens twice -- once with each poor people's march. The unpermitted march ended in a tense night time stand-off with the police.

After this busy day we collapsed on the cobble stones outside the protester's sanctuary at St. Mark's Church in the East Village. There we reunited with Simon who had been arrested Sunday night at the Queer Kiss-in. From Simon we first heard about the toxic waste site called Pier 57 that the police were using to hold protesters.

I took this portrait of Amelia just as she first walked into the purple room of our convergence space at St. Peter's in the Bronx. Amelia started Team Cascadia and hopped freight trains to get to NYC. She'd need that kind of energy in the week ahead. Click below to see with Apple's Quicktime an interview with Amelia and Chris about their arrest and imprisonment.

For those who don't wish to download the movie (and that may be everyone) here are some excerpts from the interview:

Amelia: On August 31st at approximately 6 PM in the afternoon Chris & I arrived at the library [because] we had heard about some kind of convergence that would be happening [there].

Chris: We were just turning around to get Indian food... there was really nothing going on when they decided to fence us in. ... One guy was worried his wife and kids were going to think he died in a car wreck. He just disappeared. We weren't allow phone calls until we were 20 hours in. [Chris never was allowed a phone call].

Chris: I was taken first and loaded into an unmarked van .... We were brought to a place called Pier 57 which is right on the waterfront on the West Side Highway.

Amelia: It was an old bus depot in the 50's, it was a bus garage. ... there had been a fire in the 90's which had released a lot of asbestos.

Chris: ... the walls were still lined with asbestos, and all the chemicals were still on the floor. I was told by one of the medics that if you sat or laid down on the ground people were complaining of respiratory problems or chemical burns and rashes so I was pretty careful not to do that. But several people I know have pretty serious chemical burns.

Amelia: I was in that cage from midnight until [noon]. Right above me, right in my view there are these signs, safety signs, that say that to be in that building, you need goggles, aprons, protective clothing which none of us had any of those things and our bare skin was on the cement that we were laying on. And they weren't taking anyone out, but they kept on putting people in. At one point we counted over a hundred people in that one 13 by 26 foot cell.

In conclusion, I was in jail for 44 hours not knowing my exact charges, without being arraigned and without seeing a lawyer until my 43rd hour in jail. [Until that 43rd hour] the entire time I was in jail I thought I had a Class "A" felony charge. A Class "A" felony is the same as rape and murder for having a pocket knife. ... Now I have to fight this in court. [Before she left jail Amelia's charge was dropped to a type 4 misdemeanor]

Permission granted to official indymedia sites ONLY to reproduce these images on their sites without links. Permission granted to all other non-commercial web sites to reproduce one or two of them if they link back to the beginning of this photo essay on indymedia or on my site:

correction: I errored and switched the captions for pictures 10 & 11. Picture 10 shows one of the members our team in the march and picture 11 shows the tense stand-off with the police.

Minutes before picture 11 was taken the "big incident of protester violence" occurred. An undercover cop on an unmarked motorcycle drove right into the crowd and kept on plowing through until he was allegedly stopped by a protester. That protester faces very serious charges of attacking an officer when he probably should have received a good citizens award for stopping a lunatic from driving into a crowd of pedestrians.

In picture number 11 you see the march after it has been divided and penned at the approximate location in which the undercover cop drove into the crowd. I don't know if that cop was just an out-of-control lunatic or he was acting under orders to divide up the march. However, no matter what you think of parting a march by driving a motorcycle into a crowd it is inexcusable to do this with an undercover cop driving an unmarked motorcycle. Citizens have a right to defend themselves from crazed motorists and under these circumstances they have no way of knowing that the crazed kamikaze motorcyclist is actually a cop.